1. The Field Of The Invention
The present invention relates to a shunt assembly and in particular to a shunt assembly having closely spaced contacts.
2. The Prior Art
Terminal junction or shunt systems are well known in the electrical and electronic arts since it is frequently necessary to temporarily interconnect two or more adjacent terminals. Terminal junction wiring systems generally employ single or multiple modules in the form of a housing of rigid insulating material, conventionally of rectangular configuration, incorporating means for physically mounting the housing in a support and wherein a plurality of such housings may be mounted in side by side fashion depending upon the number of electrical interconnections being made. Each housing is provided with a plurality of contact receiving cavities which extend in parallel spaced fashion within the housing and extend inwardly from an open side thereof. Conventionally a cluster of closely spaced and aligned electrical contacts are supported in a common manner by a metallic bus strip. The cluster of contacts is inserted into the respective contact receiving cavities or passageways and means are provided for preventing extraction of the bus strip and cluster of contacts from the housing. The terminal junction assembly is then mated with appropriate contacts in conventional fashion. In order to maintain engagement between the mated contacts conventionally the mutually interengageable contacts include retention means resisting withdrawal or rectrograve movement of the contacts. These shunt systems usually have the disadvantage of being rather large and bulky.
Another known shunting arrangement is the use of a patch cord system having terminals formed on either end of a short strip of flexible conductor. Each end of the patch cord is appropriately connected to the terminals to be shunted. A problem arises in using this type of shunt when the terminals to be shunted are in very closely spaced relationship, which frequently occurs on multi-terminal boards.
There have been attempts made to provide shunt devices with closely spaced contacts. However, each of these has encountered the problem of forming a contact from a continuous strip and yet have the contacts sufficiently closely spaced together. In any blanking operation the contacts necessarily have to be spaced apart a certain distance in order to provide sufficient material for forming the contact. Any bus bar formed with the contacts must be of either sufficient length to bridge the gap formed between contacts during blanking or the contacts must be individually formed, separated from a carrier strip, spaced closely together and then attached by some means, such as welding, to a busing strip with the contacts in a closely spaced relation. Such a shunting arrangement would, of course, have the disadvantage of requiring the extra steps of separating and then rejoining the contacts in the closely spaced relationship.
There have also been suggestions for folding or bending a bus strip interconnecting adjacent terminals. For example U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,345,599; 3,456,231; 3,594,714; all show terminal junctions having commoning strips which are bent to some configuration to provide close spacing between the contacts attached thereto.